Art History Today

A Disgraced Pope

It doesn't surprise me to read in the Art Newspaper about how the art historian John Pope- Hennessy, better known to renaissance scholars as "the Pope", was allowed to export an important old master out of the country instead of delaying its export license. It's sickening to read that a former director of a British gallery, and an inspiration to lots of British art historians, sought to sell a Carracci abroad instead of seeking to secure it for a U.K. museum. This seems to have been a tendency with museum directors in the days before accountability. I recall that Blunt sought to find international buyers for old masters that appeared in this country.

The Art Newspaper pulls no punches. The declassification of these secret papers show that It was clearly negligent of the then director of the London National Gallery- Michael Levey- to recommend that the export licence for the Carracci's Vision of St Francis – above- should be not be held up. Levey's words are unnerving coming from the director of a British museum:

"Given that it was the private property of a major national museum director," it would be "difficult" to recommend that its export licence should be delayed, to allow a UK public collection to match the price."

Our loss was eventually the National Gallery of Canada's gain. But perhaps the most tragic part of this saga is the Pope's statement that he wanted his paintings to go to the Ashmolean in Oxford. Although Pope-Hennessy had reassured Michael Levey that his paintings would go to Oxford, it seems that his enmity with Levey and the N.G may have played some part in the decision to sell the Carracci to the London dealer Colnaghi, who did much to promote the painting for sale. In a few months its price had rocketed from £25,000 to near £100, 000. Unfortunately, this wasn't the end of the story. Pope-Hennessy sold his Domenichino to the Getty Museum for an undisclosed price, later revealed by the man himself to have been $750, 000. The Domenichino had also passed through the export licensing system with the same result.

A very sad coda to this disreputable episode- none of the Pope's paintings were willed to the Ashmolean. They would surely have boosted the artistic stock of that provincial gallery. What a waste!

I'm sorry but this is a Pope who should be inverted, as in Dante's Inferno!

 

 

Domenichino Too

It’s going to be fever pitch excitement in that auction room at Christies on December 8^th. Not only- as mentioned a few posts ago- a splendid Rembrandt rescued from oblivion, but a fine masterpiece by Domenico Zampieri, better known to art historians as Domenichino- little Domenic. Though expected to fetch far less than the Rembrandt, Domenichino’s St John the Evangelist (1627-9) could go for £10 million.

This painting is a good example of how Domenichino assimilated high renaissance idioms: the motif of the hand within the page of the book, seems to derive from the prophets on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, as indeed does the ensemble of figures. It isn’t a direct transfer from a specific source since St Johnand the little children or putti could be distilled from a number of Michelangelo's prophets and sibyls. Yet, despite the monumental high renaissance style, Domenichino softened the forms, imparting an almost feminine grace to the Evangelist who looks up in inspiration towards the heavens.  Perhaps the most strangest feature is that abruptly raised right leg of the saint. I don't know the source of that, but my guess is that it's a modification of an aerial figure, such as in Raphael's Vision of Ezekiel or maybe the Jupiter in the Villa Farnesina in Rome.

This work was owned by one of the most famous of baroque collectors- the Marchese Giustiniani, who had a taste for the academic classicism of such artists as Domenichino and Poussin. Not that they were his favourite painters- that accolade fell to Caravaggio whose works numbered 12 in the Marchese’s collection.

It’s not often you get a baroque painting of this calibre come up at open auction. Coupled with the Rembrandt, it should electrify the atmosphere at Christies in December.  

Rembrandt After 40 Years

Artdaily reports on a Rembrandt portrait that is coming up for auction at Christies in December. The painting, Portrait of a Man, Half-Length with Arms Akimbo, dates from about 1658. More intriguingly, this painting has not been seen in public for nearly 40 years. The sitter, who seems assured and comfortable in his pose, has not been identified. The portrait found its way to Columbia University, where it survived a student sit-in in 1968 before being sold in 1974 to raise money for the university. It was last seen in public in the exhibition, Rembrandt After 300 Years, held in Detroit in 1970.

I’ve only seen a photo of the work- unfortunately accompanied by a Christie’s employee- but my first thought is that there’s something of the self-portrait formula about it. The man wears a beret- a typical Rembrandt accoutrement- and the white shirt visible between the areas of the over garment recalls such treatments as the canonical self-portrait in London. The sprightly rendered white impasto really is a fine passage of painting; that’s worth the price of admission alone. And that impassive but steady gaze recalls the self-portraits too. I can’t find anything about it in my Rembrandt catalogues and books, but I’m hoping that I can find out more eventually.

This elusive Rembrandt is expected to sell for 18-25 million pounds- but I hope it doesn’t disappear into the bowels of a private collection.

I shall keep tabs on this auction as it will also feature a good Domenichino, of which more another time.